The exchange of emails across organizations or from an organization to an end user are widely accepted and promoted business practices. B2B (Business to Business) email exchanges, and the delivery of targeted email to end users, are practices that are growing exponentially across business enterprises. Organizations can promote their brand through these types of email campaigns. In order to enforce the value of a brand and promote brand email campaigns, email messages can include branding assets together with the contents of the email. Branding assets are basically media constructs like a company logo (image or movie), company sound effects, or any other media that promotes a company's brand. Moreover, branding assets can also be any additional artifacts used for promoting business driven email campaigns. Branding assets or references to the assets are typically embedded within the email header. In order to reliably execute brand email campaigns, the brand mail that includes branding assets and the message content should be inviolable, for example, thereby enforcing the integrity of the brand. By enforcing brand integrity, brand-specific campaigns/scenarios can be executed adding to the value of an organization's brand. However, if brand integrity is compromised, there could be serious repercussions for an organization's brand, for example, brand value deflation.
The brand mail system addresses these concerns by allowing organizations to execute branding email campaigns reliably, efficiently and securely. But why should BrandMail be secure? Brand mail should be secure because of the importance of “brand-value” for an organization or an entity. “Brand-Value” is enforced by preserving the integrity of branded emails. The brand email integrity is preserved by making the email tamper-proof and unforgeable. If tampering or forging occurs the value of an organization's brand may deflate significantly.
Organizations exchanging brand mail(s) can be assured that both parties are truly communicating between each other (no forging of a message) and that the mail contents have not been tampered with. The same applies to the scenario where a branded mail is sent from an organization (for example, hp.com) to an end-user registered within a web mail system (for example, Yahoo, Hotmail). In order for the brand mail system to be a reliable trust mechanism it should address main security concerns.